Building on Use of Personal Web 2.0 TechnologiesBrian KellyUKOLNUniversity of BathBath, UK

UKOLN is supported by:This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)

Acceptable Use PolicyRecording of this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised.

Acceptable Use PolicyRecording of this talk, taking photos, discussing the content using Twitter, blogs, etc. is permitted providing distractions to others is minimised.

Resources bookmark tag‘online-information-2009’Resources bookmark tag‘online-information-2009’

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/online-information-2009/http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/online-information-2009/

Email:b.kelly@ukoln.ac.uk

Twitter:http://twitter.com/briankelly/ Blog:

http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/Twitter tag:#online09

Twitter tag:#online09

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About The SpeakerBrian Kelly:

• Works at UKOLN – a national centre of expertise in digital information management, located at the University of Bath, UK

• UK Web Focus: a national Web advisory post • Funded by JISC and MLA to support UK’s higher

and further education & cultural heritage sectors• Involved in the Web since January 1993• Currently active in promoting best practices for

Web 2.0

About This Talk• Introduction• The political and economic context • The unmanaged Social Web environment• Emerging best practices:

Lightweight policies Risks and opportunities framework Risk audit framework

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Beyond the Techies (1)Implications of the “The Edgeless University” report:

• “The forces now confronting higher education have been called 'a perfect storm’. They are serious challenges. [HEIs] can no longer depend on ever-increasing allocation of funds”

• “This seminar feels a bit like sitting with a group of record industry executives in 1999”

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Beyond the Techies(2)

A need to consider implications of the “Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World” report

• What ‘network as a platform’ / Cloud computing means the institution

• How Universities should respond

• How support services can make use of the Social Web

Overhaul of Universities

• As public funding becomes more scarce, universities will be encouraged to focus on what they do best

• There will be a consumer revolution for students with each course labelled with key facts

• … universities have enjoyed a "benign financial climate" in recent years … this high level of public funding cannot continue

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Or will Conservative plans be more relevant to the sector? Or will Conservative plans be more relevant to the sector?

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Opportunities & ChallengesOpportunities & Challenges

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Web2MemeMap, Tim O’Reilly, 2005

Characteristics Of Web 2.0

• Network as (my) platform• Benefits of scale (Social

Web)• Clean URIs• Remix and mash-ups

Syndication (RSS)• Architecture of participation

Blogs & wikis Social networking,

tagging & sharing• Trust and openness

Characteristics Of Web 2.0

• Network as (my) platform• Benefits of scale (Social

Web)• Clean URIs• Remix and mash-ups

Syndication (RSS)• Architecture of participation

Blogs & wikis Social networking,

tagging & sharing• Trust and openness

Web 2.0

A Non-technical Perspective on Web 2.0

It’s not just about the technological aspects, it’s about rethinking ownership and use of services and content

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It’s About The Individual!

How do you relate to a world in which the focus of the Social Web is the individual. Challenges posed:

• ‘It’s my space’• ‘Sustainability• Privacy• Editorial control• Branding• …

How do you relate to a world in which the focus of the Social Web is the individual. Challenges posed:

• ‘It’s my space’• ‘Sustainability• Privacy• Editorial control• Branding• …

Why Use the Social Web?

10 http://www.flickr.com/photos/quelsaa/2080736454/sizes/o/

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The 1 – 9 – 90 ChallengeParticipation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to

Contribute In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action. (Jakob Neilson, Oct 2006)

Potential Benefits:• Globalisation• Cross-fertilisation• Unexpected benefits• Maximising impact

Potential Dangers:• Globalisation• Mono-culture• Unexpected dangers• Loss of impact

Remember that Social Web services improve as the numbers of users increase

Remember that Social Web services improve as the numbers of users increase

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A Question“How Can Institutions Develop Innovative and Affordable Tools to Engage Increasingly Sophisticated Audiences” (JISC Digitisation Conf 2007)Some thoughts:

• In some areas they shouldn’t attempt to compete with market place successes (e.g. Google)

• If some cases institutions may be indifferent to the service provider (e.g. Microsoft or Google Docs)

There are real needs to:• Answer the question “Why develop?”• Be realistic if development work is funded• Be user-focussed (and this isn’t necessarily easy)• Be prepared to write off investment if users don’t

want what we’ve developed

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Being RealisticOptions in light of the credit crunch:

• Let’s build up an empire now which will be embarrassing to close down

• Let’s use issues of ownership, stability, privacy, … to stifle discussion of 3rd party solutions

• Let’s explore a blended approach (a 3rd way?)

The Pilot was a Success …Following a very successful pilot project the JANET Collaborate prototype site will shortly be retired.

 …

This retirement has come about as a result of difficulties in maintaining the prototype beyond its intended lifetime. We are now looking at how to add the functionality into the JANET service portfolio in order to provide an improved feature set based on the requirements gathered in the pilot.

 

We understand that some fans of the prototype site may be disappointed by this news. We apologise for this and at the same time thank all the users of the prototype for their strong, enthusiastic support during the pilot.

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Managed External Services

We’re seeing greater take-up of email in the cloud

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Cloud computing - Hope or Hype?, From A Distance blog, 4 Nov 2009, Chris Sexton

Discussions about managed cloud services now mainstream

Unmanaged External Services

My UK Web Focus blog, hosted on Wordpress.com

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Unmanaged External Services

IT Service director blogs on 3rd party service!

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And allows unmoderated 3rd party content to be published

Use of Cloud Services

Use of services in the cloud:• We are committed

professionals• We want to support

innovation• We can demonstrate

best practices

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Policies

Experience at Croydon Council illustrates the need for lightweight and flexible policies

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Lightweight Policies

Mosman Council provides an example of a lightweight policy for Twitter

Policies

Risks and IWMW 2006

Risk assessment approach initially developed for IWMW 2006

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Risk Management

Risks and IWMW 2006

Summary of the risks

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Risk Management

Risks and IWMW 2006

There are also risks in doing nothing

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Risk Management

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Biases

Subjective factors

Towards a Framework

“Time To Stop Doing and Start Thinking: A Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services”, Museums & the Web 2009 conference

IntendedPurpose

Benefits (various

stakeholdersRisks

(various stakeholders

Missed Opps. (various

stakeholdersCosts

(various stakeholders

• Sharing experiences

• Learning from successes& failures

• Tackling biases• …

• Application to existing services

• Application to in-house development

• …

Risk Management

An Audit Framework

Scenario• Social Web services fail• Institutional content is lost• Funders demand action

How to respond?• Replicate functionality of 3rd party

services? / ban use of 3rd party services?• Ignore concerns• An audit framework to ensure awareness

of risks, to inform planning

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Risk Management

Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

Bottom-up:• Individual auditing of personal uses of

Social Web services• Knowledge of what is being used• Help to instill awareness of risks

Top-down:• Buck stops here• Organisation likely to have legal

responsibility

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Risk Management

Bottom-Up And Top-DownInstitutional requirement:

• All departments to report on use of Social Web to support institutional objectives

Departmental implementation:• Audit framework and collation of responses• Development of action plans• Inform institutional responses

Individual actions:• How individuals make use of Social Web• Clarification of ownership, identification of risks

and description of risk management plans

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Risk Management

Memo From The VCFrom: VC, University of Poppleton

To: Heads of academic departments and services

Subject: Departmental Audit: Use of Cloud Services

Following the THE article on the loss of teaching and research resources following the collapse of Faceblock service all departments are required to complete the following self-assessment audit form on:

• Use of third party services• Risk assessment of viability of services• Risk assessment of other potential risks• Disaster recovery plans

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Example: Audit

Tools and purpose:• Slideshare: Enhance awareness of

presentations and allow embedding• Delicious: Bookmarking of resources,

which can be embedded elsewhere and resources shared

• UK Web Focus blog: Dissemination and user engagement

• YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo: Videos of talks which can be embedded elsewhere

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Risk Management

Example: Risk Assessment

Probability of loss of service:• Slideshare: Mature service; market

leader• Delicious: Mature service; market leader• UK Web Focus blog: Mature service;

market leader• YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo:

(a) Market leader, but known to be making losses(b) No longer accepts new videos(c) Newish service

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Risk Management

Example: Risk Management

Plans if service withdrawn:• Slideshare: Master copy held locally• Delicious: Copy resources (Diigo)• UK Web Focus blog: Backup help locally• YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo:

Masters held locally

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Risk Management

Example: User Education

Plans to minimise user inconvenience if service withdrawn:

• Slideshare: Location of master included in metadata and embedded in content

• Delicious: None • UK Web Focus blog: Blog will provide

information on migration. RSS will be redirected.

• YouTube, Google Video and Vimeo: Location of master included in metadata

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Risk Management

The future is exciting - but institutions will need to develop risk management plans for their use of the Web 2.0 environment

Conclusions

Acknowledgments to Michael Edson for the Web Tech Guy and Angry Staff Person post / comic strip